Notch Says To Schafer “Lets Make Psychonauts 2 Happen”

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We mentioned earlier that Tim Schafer would love to make a Pyschonauts 2, but can’t get the funding. Well, Minecraft creator Markus “Notch” Persson spotted our story and suggested to Schafer that they should work together to make it happen. Multimillionaire Persson clearly has the funds to do this, and everyone in the world with their brain in the right place wants to see a sequel to one of the most joyful games of all time, so this is a thing that might actually happen.

Clearly at the moment this is a tweeted offer, not a signed contract, but it’s a massively exciting one. Tim, say yes!

114 Comments

Seeing news like this makes me wonder if we’ll one day be reading about the rise and fall of Mojang. After all, it’s one thing publishing 1-4 man team games that are unlikely to top the €1 million budget mark. It’s another to start throwing the millions needed to make an “A” or even “AA” game around. Although I’d hope of course this only leads to a great game that sells well.

So far, they’re a 1-hit-wonder. They’ve made 1 really popular game, and published someone else’s game that I heard nothing about after launch. And they talk about another game (That I thought was launching months ago? Maybe that was just the announcement?) that I’m not sure will be fun.

So yeah, I think there is ever chance we’ll read about their rise and fall.

They could still come though on things, of course. We’ll have to wait and see.

Minecraft was a one hit wonder. One heck of a one hit wonder and he didn’t have to share it with anyone. He can afford this. Hell chances are it’d make millions as the markets different to what it was in the PS2 Xbox era. The PC has become pretty good at championing the oddities hell Notch owes his livlihood to that fact.

My point was that video/computer game publishing is hard. Mojang is in a fairly strong position that for the moment they’re doing this all with cash reserves, not debt like most of the big boys do, so their costs and risks are lower. While they only fund small, new studios (Oxeye or the Cubeworld guy), they’ve got the kind of cash to do this for years. If they start funding increasingly bigger projects and studios, then it only takes a few flops for the whole fairytale to be over. (Ask 10Tacle, or THQ).

I was never trying to imply that Psyconauts 2 alone would sink the company – and it may well make a big return. Just that Notch is getting in to a business that’s pretty risky and difficult (although Paradox seem to be doing very well funding medium-scale projects)

I don’t know if he’ll do it, but Notch should set aside some money for himself that he does not breach for business. That way he’ll be fine no matter what. Too many people that get rich from a good idea invest it all foolishly.

Cmaster is absolutely spot on, making something like Psychonauts can kill a studio and very nearly did Double Fine.

Double Fine themselves have stated they don’t want to do huge multi-year games anymore.

If Notch is willing to fund the entire game upfront then Double Fine would have less of a problem going to work on it but they are not going to blow money on a dubious joint venture for a game that nearly sunk the studio, these are people with families to feed, mortgages to pay & so on.

It’s not necessary for Notch to bear all risk. Let Mojang publish, raise funds from Mojang, crowdfunding and perhaps a few other investors. Crowdfunding (kickstarter) is an especially good thing to do in this case: not so much to raise a lot of money, but at least to test whether people would be interested in a Psychonauts sequel and whether they’re willing to pay for it. And even if the first game wasn’t a huge commercial success, it has raised a lot of ‘brand awareness’ and received much critical acclaim, which will probably translate into better sales for a sequel. And with Steam, it’s easier than ever to distribute a game like Psychonauts.

I’d like to point out that there have been riskier things done and accomplished by Indie devs, just go and see Paradox’s games res’ume. A large portion of those is so very niche that it would be impossible to make more, but they found a way.

Same goes with Killing Floor’s Developer, you would never think that they would be able to keep going with games that had very little in marketing and what not,but they do it.

My point is that Notch could do this and still live, while if any other tried it they would probably hit the gutter soon after.

Also, Schafer, if you do not agree to this I will go over to your house, get on my knees and then pounce onto your leg and hump it like a dog until you agree to do it. I want to be able to play the sequel to one of my favorite games of all time before I end up 6 feet under.

I absolutely adore Psychonauts, it’s one of the best gaming experiences I’ve ever had. And yet, despite the sequel hook at the end of the game, I’m not sure if I really want a continuation. It’s one of these games that works so well precisely because it feels so unique. I’d rather have Tim Schaefer work on something completely fresh.

I think I’m actually inclined to agree with you. As good as Psychonauts was, I’d prefer developers with a strong creative streak like Double Fine to focus on thinking up new and wonderful game concepts, rather than rehashing old ones. Not that I’m suggesting a Psychonauts 2 would be a rehash, but well… if someone told me that Shafer was making Grim Fandango 2, I dont know whether I’d be excited or aghast.

While I’d take a “big” Schafer game based on new IP over one which is a sequel any day, I think this kind of opportunity is exactly what is needed to get Double Fine back into big games. If they haven’t been able to find a publisher willing to fund Psychonauts 2, I can’t imagine it being any easier to get funding for an equally ambitious game based on original IP. There is likely a large audience there for Psychonauts 2 now that the first game has had it’s chance to be recognized far and wide as the piece of gaming genius that it is. Having NotchMojang involved will bring yet more people to it. A successful Psychonauts 2 means (apart from the obvious fact that it will probably be great) it will be easier for Double Fine to fund more big games.

Besides, I loved Psychonauts and would welcome a sequel. It’d be pretty hard to run the concept dry when just about every level takes place in the imagination of another character.

I would love a Psychonauts 2. It ended on a “continued next week” type cliffhanger and would have left me wanting more anyway, and excited as I was about Costume Quest, I did then go and play it, so I’m somewhat cautious about other Double Fine projects.

I wonder if twitter didn’t have a character limit then it would read “Let’s make Psychonauts 2 happen – if you buy minecraft you can pretty much do anything with it, so if you buy that Tim then you can do what you want”.

You think so? As someone before me said, putting out a AA/AAA game requires plenty of the “multi” in “multimillionaire”.

Think of 3D Realms, they tried to secure funding with 2K to polish DNF’s in its final stretch (and got denied the money). How much just for that? 2mi. It’s a really expensive industry and development costs are easily underestimated.

I think that just highlights the astoundingly bloated nature of AAA development, rather than the budgetary requirements of producing a game.

Just look at Renegade X for an example of a tiny, hobbyist studio working with a budget of near zero, and producing something that could have passed for a AAA game just a couple of years back – link to renegade-x.com

3D Realms are piss artists who essentially made the same game five times whilst throwing as much money away as they possibly could. They were essentially paying a full team for 6 years without any discernable income.

As an ex-games dev from one of the world’s most expensive games (APB), most of the cost of developing on AAA is just on staff (as in fact it is in almost any company, hence the management love of redundancy/layoffs).

Code takes a long time to write, longer to fix, and 3D art assets take a long time too, and are usually build form scratch for every game – thats every tree, plant, gun and car build and tested. Games are also subjective experiences, so stuff gets iterated on (the ‘polish’, usually not given enough time). Most AAA titles take years, and would take even longer if the over-worked staff worked their contracted hours and not the ones they really work.

Take an average professionals salery, and multiply it by a modest team size, for a couple of years, and you will soon see where the millions go. To you or I a million is a lot, but its not much when funding a team.

@solosnake But, APB had two big areas to code that Psychonauts would not. One is online multiplayer, which is just a mess to deal with. The other is customization. Psychonauts had something like 15 characters most of them stationary, APB had thousands moving. Also, Psychonauts is cartoony so they can go lower res, like they did with Brutal Legend.

@Jimbo It sold over 200k in it’s first week, and about half a million in its first month. Since it probably took longer than that to drop prices it’s safe to guess $60*500k*.45 (retailer+console take) = 13.35 million. If the next 450k sold at $20 that brings it to 17 million. Even if the final 450k sold for $10, it still kicks it up to 19 million. It probably was a tight squeeze but made a bit of profit. Also, the 1.4 million is from an interview with Schaefer, so its more reliable than vgchartz (which is where the rest is from).

Using DNF as an example is .. well .. stupid. Like using Heaven’s Gate as an example of film development costs, or using Donald Trump as an example of a businessperson. I believe the same applies to APB somewhat, but DNF is the legendary shining epitome of a failed project amazingly mismanaged by cackhanded cretins, essentially flushing wads and wads of money down the toilet and/or burning it to keep warm.

“Not a fair comparison in my opinion. Brutal Legend was awful, and Psychonauts was fantastic.”

Brutal Legend reviewed well enough. It wasn’t a lack of quality that stopped Brutal Legend selling – Schafer is just very good at making good games that don’t appeal to a whole lot of people. He / Double Fine have no track record of being successful with big budget titles at all.

They either need to stick to what they’re good at (low budget games which don’t need to sell all that well) or they need somebody who can tell Tim to cut it out when he’s doing something crazy. Somebody who can say things like “Hey, this AAA game we’re gonna market as an open-world God of War – which is actually a pretty good idea by the way- probably doesn’t need to be an RTS as well, ya know?”

When I read that Tim Schafer required funding for Psychonauts 2 on the last article. I don’t know why, but the first guy I imagined was Notch helping out. Can’t Believe its actually happening. Looks like the start of a lovely relationship. We need more games like this with better writing and gameplay than most AAA titles.

The importance of punctuation.
“Although over time, my husband will desire me less sexually, he will always enjoy my pies.” Makes sense.
“Although over time, my husband will desire me less, sexually he will always enjoy my pies.” Whoah what
“Although over time, my husband will desire me less, sexually, he will always enjoy my pies.” Not sure…

Oh, my. And with that, Notch becomes the patron saint of PC gaming. Despite the doubts aired upthread, I’m going to take this as an unmitigated good thing and also preemptively congratulate RPS for the matchmaking.

Can I just say how both odd and awesome this type of situation is, just think about it.

Here you have Tim Schafer on one side – a veteran game creator (some may even say legendary one at that) with many a game behind his belt, but he can’t afford to fund a project. And on the other side you’ve got this dude who created this weird (in a good way) game that’s making him millions of dollars and he’s just like “Yo Tim, let’s do it up brah!”. :)

I don’t think caddyB had a commercial success in mind, it may sound strange but some people value other things than money, sometime you just want something to happen, even if you doesn’t recoup the cost or only make a few pennies in the end.

Even if Psychonauts 2 doesn’t sell well (would still sell better than Psychonauts 1 if the game is any good in my opinion, with the indie market/audience of today – in 2005, the last Oddworld and last Black and White was released, while NDS and PSP were becoming the best platform for small/medium size game project with a rather small audience), it would be something worth it.

Oh and the publisher Majesco (minor publisher, no big titles in its catalog) released the game with a week between the console and the PC version, and didn’t released it in Europe.
It’s only 7 months later than THQ released the game in Europe.
How can you expect a commercial success with that ? The market was already shifting away from that type of game on these platforms (Xbox/PS2/PC), not planning a worldwide release was suicidal.

I’d imagine another expensive flop is the last thing Double Fine needs, even if somebody else does want to throw their money away to see it happen. I think what they’ve been doing since Brutal Legend suits them much better.

Not sure how I feel about this. I think I’d rather see a new, proper-sized game from Double Fine (I’m not a fan of the little games they’ve been putting out) than a sequel, but on the other hand, a sequel will be closer in line with what I enjoyed about Psychonauts and have less chance of them branching out into something sort of nutty and not that fun like Brutal Legend.

I know adventure games are passe now but I do wish that Schafer and Gilbert could have kept doing them. They’ve both gone on to more heavily gameplay-focused things that I don’t enjoy ):

It sounds like a cool idea but I don’t know if Notch would be able to handle distribution, advertising, and deals with the console manufacturers. Up until now he’s been selling a product that requires no accounting department, no advertising, and no distribution channels other than his own website. That doesn’t last forever.

Also, it doesn’t seem like Doublefine are terribly interested in PC gaming either. A venture capitalist bought the PC rights to their last three games and hired his own team to port them (who did a fantastic job). I’m still burned by Once Upon a Monster (at least that kind of makes sense) and Brutal Legend being console only.

Notch earned what, 60 million dollars on minecraft so far? something like that. He could easily give DoubleFine 10 million to make very nice Psychonauts 2 game and I would bet it would make a nice return. And even if not, Notch would not go bankrupt over it.

4.888.160 copies sold as of right now x 16 euros(set randomly low, because of price flucturations) equals Notch can do whatever the fack he wants …. (or 78 million(!) Euros)

Please understand that.

Notch can fund and sell Psyconauts 2 – never make a dime and still have a company and money for life. Minecraft is grossing 152.000 euros each day!

each and every day! There is no middleman, no platformholder no expenses other than what mojang uses internally, and that is way way way below what your average developer has as expenses.

Now, if Scrolls and whatever else they publish is making money too – well…

Now imagine this – Notch selling Psyconauts 2 directly to users. That means that ROI on Psychonauts 2 would be waaaaay lower than normal. They wouldn’t need to sell that many copies. Lets say it costs 15 million euros(and that is set high, They can maybe do it for half) sold at 15 euros – That would be 1.000.000 sold copies to recoup. Strength of IP, Strength of Notch and Tim Shafer I’m guessing minimum 500.000 units sold. Which means that Notch would “only” be 7 million euros poorer. Which, as of now, is 1/10th of his fortune….

I don’t know if it’s a good idea. But Notch can do whatever he wants, because he is really rich.

You probably have to slash that revenue by half from the start, because Mojang is in a high services/high taxes country. Then, substract the cost of their new offices (they already moved twice), Minecon, salaries, etc.

Not to say they don’t have a lot of money, but I don’t think it’s the infinite well people seem to think it is.

You have to be careful when funding a software project, because most of them need more money than initially planned because they can’t meet deadlines, etc.

everyone in the world with their brain in the right place wants to see a sequel

I… Don’t want a sequel to Psychonauts. I don’t have anything against sequels or Psychonauts, at least not for the purpose of Psychonauts 2 happening, but I can’t be bothered to think of a good reason why it should happen. From a business perspective, there wasn’t much to talk about other than Majesco’s woes. The only valid point reasoning in this context might be that financial backing wouldn’t be so indebted to the old withered lizards that lord over the industry. From a criative standpoint I’m sure both Notch and Schafer can think of something great, too. But I don’t have a burning desire to revisit the game – if I do, I can play the original. The same happens with Grim Fandango or Full Throttle. Does anyone really feel there was anything, from gameplay to story, left unexplored, untapped, underdeveloped? If they do, does it really have to be a recycling of the same themes and play mechanics – or even the same universe? I never felt disappointed with Psychonauts because it wasn’t Grim 2; but felt mighty satisfied that it was clearly a Schafer game.

I can’t imagine a sequel to Grim Fandango, I think that would be sacrilegious, but the ending of Psychonauts is basically a setup for one!
What I’d love to see most from Tim Schafer is another game with a story as good as the one in Grim Fandango and with gameplay that equals it. That would be amazing. The story of Psychonauts was good, but rather simplistic.

Maybe. I’ve come to take some game endings as a license to imagine what may happen after them. Of course, we already do that. I’m thinking of endings like, say, almost every Soul Reaver chapter or just about any Modern Warfare. The former, good games that they are, mostly have terrible endings of the “to be continued” variety. The latter are always bombarding you with things not being what they seem and conspiracies up the wazoo. Either case just hammers the point that sooner or later, someone is going to carry their specific torches. With PN, I never really got that feeling.

This could be cool…as long as Persson isn’t allowed anywhere near the design. The man is a mess of half-finished ideas deployed long before they are ready and then never picked up again. Minecraft has really been improving since he voluntarily ‘retired’ from the project in favor of Jens.

If money continues to be a problem (though I’m sure it isn’t), it actually wouldn’t be a bad idea for Double Fine to start a Kickstarter campaign in addition to Notch’s chips. Yes, it means paying twice for a game, but when it’s a game that otherwise would never happen…